Life with Kevin… Live at KEXP

Kevin & Lisa at the Live at KEXP Volume Three Listening PartyExperience Music Project, July 10 2007photo by Gregory A. Perez

Welcome to the eighth (or is it ninth?) installment of Life With Kevin! Over the past year Iâ€™ve made fun of Kevin just about every way I can think of â€“ his car, his tea and kombucha habits, his bagel addiction â€“ but Iâ€™ve never written about what we actually do here every day. One of the major projects we work on together is Live at KEXP. Iâ€™m going to use a few Life With Kevins to write about how we produce Live at KEXP â€“ from song selection, to artwork, to sound mixing and mastering, to production, to having 4,000 pounds of CDs land on our doorstep, to getting them into stores for people to buy.

Tuesday night we celebrated the release of Live at KEXP Volume Three with the donors who made it all possible. Live at KEXP was Kevinâ€™s brainstorm â€“ he saw it as a way to preserve these amazing, exclusive live performances and get them in the hands of our listeners. Thanks to the generous support of many, many people, Live at KEXP has become a terrific benefit for KEXP â€“ every penny of its sale goes to support KEXP programming.

photos by Gregory A. Perez

This year, 275 donors made gifts to support Live at KEXP Volume Three. They made their commitment to the project back in February, before we knew what the CD would look like, what would be on it, or when it would arrive! In exchange, they got a copy of the CD before anyone else, and some made special gifts that got them Live at KEXP Volume Three on vinyl (which is still being pressed and should arrive in a few weeks!). Donors also had their names listed in the liner notes, and were invited to this special thank you party. It was a great event with a surprise performance by local artist Robb Benson!

If you didnâ€™t pick up Live at KEXP Volume Three during this yearâ€™s pledge drives, it will go on sale August 21. And if you did choose it as a thank you gift in return for pledge of support, itâ€™ll be in the mail in the next couple of weeks!

Stay tuned for details on the tracks and the bands, where to buy it, and more on the making of Live at KEXP!